A presidential pardon is about as complete a financial rescue as exists — and for Todd and Julie Chrisley it erased some $17 million of court-ordered restitution. But pardons have limits, and in August 2026 the Chrisleys found one: the IRS filed a fresh federal tax lien against the couple for $1,571,452.61, covering the 2021 and 2022 tax years. A pardon forgives a crime. It does not pay your taxes.
The Lien That Arrived After the Pardon
The lien, filed on 19 August 2026 in Davidson County, Tennessee, breaks down as $142,410.72 for 2021 and $1,429,041.89 for 2022. Both assessments predate the pardon — and tax debts were never part of what the pardon covered. It is a fittingly familiar problem for the stars of Chrisley Knows Best, whose entire public story has been a cycle of spectacular wealth, spectacular debt, and legal consequences.
From $49 Million in Debt to Reality TV
Long before the fraud conviction, there was the bankruptcy. In August 2012 Todd Chrisley filed for Chapter 7 protection listing roughly $49.4 million in liabilities against $4.2 million in assets — including some $12 million in mortgages, about $600,000 in overdue federal taxes, and exposure from a personally guaranteed development loan that had gone bad. The filing famously listed $100 in cash and $55 in a checking account. The case was later settled with the trustee for $150,000. The arc — riches, collapse, paperwork — is a familiar one in celebrity money stories, from Lindsay Lohan onwards.
Two years later, Chrisley Knows Best premiered on USA Network, presenting Todd as a flamboyant, fabulously wealthy Atlanta real estate mogul. The show ran nine seasons, until 2023, and at trial prosecutors said about $6 million flowed to the couple’s company, 7C’s Productions, from television work between 2013 and 2016.
Conviction, Prison — and the Pardon
In June 2022 a federal jury convicted the Chrisleys of conspiring to obtain more than $30 million in fraudulent bank loans using fabricated financial statements, along with tax evasion. Todd was sentenced to 12 years and Julie to seven. They surrendered in January 2023. The court ordered restitution of $17,270,741.57 for Todd and $4,740,645.04 for Julie.
While they were inside, the assets moved: their Brentwood, Tennessee mansion — bought in 2019 for $3.375 million — was sold off-market in April 2023 for $5.2 million. In May 2025, after about 28 months served, President Trump granted both Chrisleys full and unconditional pardons. The pardons extinguished the remaining criminal restitution — roughly $17 million — although money already collected was not returned. Celebrity legal history is full of such fine print: Martha Stewart’s insider-trading case cost her a billion dollars on paper, even though her prison sentence was five months.
The pattern is one readers of celebrity legal sagas will recognise from Rudy Giuliani’s story: a pardon deals with criminal exposure, while civil judgments, settlements and tax bills carry on regardless.
The Bills That Survived
And there were plenty. In April 2024 a jury awarded former Georgia tax investigator Amy Doherty-Heinze $755,000 in defamation damages against Todd. A $1 million settlement the couple won in their own lawsuit against a Georgia tax official in January 2024 was itself targeted for restitution garnishment while that debt still stood.
Since their release the Chrisleys have worked to rebuild an income: a Lifetime docuseries, The Chrisleys: Back to Reality, a multiyear PodcastOne deal to relaunch their Chrisley Confessions podcast, and — in June 2026 — a lawsuit against their former defence lawyers seeking more than $25 million for alleged legal malpractice. In a September 2025 interview the couple said they had spent around $3 million on legal fees alone.
What are they worth now? Nobody can say with confidence — which, for a couple once convicted of inflating exactly that number, is perhaps the most honest answer available. What is public is the arithmetic of their obligations: a $1.57 million tax lien that no pardon can touch.
Sources and notes: Figures from CNW’s Chrisley money-problems report (October 2026), including the August 2026 IRS lien filing, court restitution orders and the 2012 bankruptcy schedules. The malpractice suit contains allegations that have not been proven. Net worth figures for the couple are not publicly determinable.
